Homomorphic-based Enhanced Visual Search is so privacy-preserving, iPhone giant activated it without asking

I have never liked Apple and lately even less. F… US monopolies

  • Mwa@lemm.eeEnglish
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    4 months ago

    I love how Apple advertises “Privacy by default” but they do this

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Although this is terrible, once again a headline on lemmy made me paranoid only to find out that my phone probably doesn’t even support this.

    Going through the settings and turning things off is second nature to me by now, it’s not unique to Apple (looking at your Microsoft).

    What we need is an opt out mode on every device. Similar to the accept necessary cookies only, we need every device to let you fully opt out from everything it can when you boot it up for the first time.

    • Cataphract@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      I don’t think it’s fair to say “once again a headline on lemmy”, by connotation you’re vaguely suggesting Lemmy is responsible.

      I’m a big settings person as well but honestly Apple is a fucking evil genius at hiding options in menus within menus. Plus this was an opt-change done randomly in the middle of “nobody knows”, I don’t check all of my settings and their subsequent menus daily for any changes being made.

      I’m just flabbergasted by the whole apple industry though. Like it’s obvious when a company wants to offer a new user experience (their newest innovative design!), and it’s obvious when a company wants to only tailor to “Their preferred vision of what an apple user and their experience should be”. No one asked for this shit, and it’s being shoved down everyone’s throats.

      I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I still watch people walk into a Dollar General knowing how crappy that company acts and how much more costly everything is. We’re all slowly being pigeon holed into a “unified user experience” and it’s the shittiest outcome.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      4 months ago

      Tim Apple was going to kick $1M to whomever won. For a guy with a net worth in the tens of billions, this is just a tip to the wait staff at the Table Of Success.

      But the Apple photo library is a huge potential source of revenue. Its worth significantly more than $1M. This is, incidentally, why you don’t need to pay Apple to host those images. If you’re not the client, you’re the product.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        This is, incidentally, why you don’t need to pay Apple to host those images

        Huh? You pay for anything above 5 GB or so. It’s standard for most cloud providers to offer a free tier to get you hooked. Their storage after that isn’t all that cheap even.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.comEnglish
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    4 months ago

    once again having an old as fudge iphone has paid off

    if only i could have kept my iphone 5 working i could still be using headphones

  • dubyakay@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Enhanced Visual Search in Photos allows you to search for photos using landmarks or points of interest. Your device privately matches places in your photos to a global index Apple maintains on our servers. We apply homomorphic encryption and differential privacy, and use an OHTTP relay that hides [your] IP address. This prevents Apple from learning about the information in your photos. You can turn off Enhanced Visual Search at any time on your iOS or iPadOS device by going to Settings > Apps > Photos. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General.

    Apple did explain the technology in a technical paper published on October 24, 2024, around the time that Enhanced Visual Search is believed to have debuted. A local machine-learning model analyzes photos to look for a “region of interest” that may depict a landmark. If the AI model finds a likely match, it calculates a vector embedding – an array of numbers – representing that portion of the image.

    So it’s local. And encrypted. How is this really news? Am I missing something?

  • Jinni@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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    4 months ago

    Never accept the technology just because it is optional. Eventually it will become default and eventually maditory.

  • شاهد على إبادة@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    My iPhone 13 mini will be my lost iPhone. They lost me when it turned out they donate to illegal settlements in the West Bank. This is just more fuel to the fire.

  • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    I don’t even get it. Like, make a pop up with a short blurb explaining the feature. Most users will probably opt in, and you don’t piss off the ones that don’t want this.

  • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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    4 months ago

    For-profit companies are perpetually locked in a conflict of interest. Inevitably, they will have to decide between what is in the best interest of their users (or other public interests such as the environment for example) with their never-ending obsession to make ever more money. No matter what they say or do publicly, they will always sell out for more profit.

    In this case, a bunch of Silicon Valley investors (people who have collectively made trillions over every iteration of IT progress) are forcing “AI” to be the next thing. They have basically decided that they want all tech progress to focus on this area and are forcing every company they invest in to make that happen, regardless of the societal impact.

    As a result, you can see clearly that all of these companies (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit) are basing all their business decisions into trying to make this fantasy become a reality. Even Apple now, the masters of creating a facade of privacy is falling straight into line. And the one thing they all have in common: investors.

    And that is why you should always be wary of interacting with big business interests - they will inevitably sell you out someday.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Somehow I am much less scared of AI being forced into everything compared to VR or crypto.

      I guess it’s because I know AI is a nothing burger and will slowly lose hype.

      • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        While I agree that the AI they will implement will likely not be very effective, it doesn’t have to be to cause massive human suffering. Eg. Google incorrectly marking exposed photos of your kid for your doctor as CSAM. There’s also no guarantee that once these companies finally wake the fuck up (If they’re not already completely aware what they’re doing is messed up) that they will close these holes they’re punching, and that could mean they could replace AI with a mass surveillance tool at any point without you knowing. Nobody should be a fan of this.

  • Anticorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    4 months ago

    To what end? They claim they can’t read the data, nor the output, nor where it originated from. So… what’s the point? If their claims are true then what is the point of all that data transfer, processing, and the massive engineering efforts they’ve put into it? If it’s just so they can tag a location, then they could have just used geo location on the device without sharing anything. If it’s to be able to search for " Eiffel Tower" and see pictures you have of it, well, haven’t they already been able to do this before this feature with on-board AI processing that doesn’t require the data to be shipped to Apple? Something seems off to me, but maybe because I’m not clear on the purpose.

    • kadup@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      They already had this type of local processing for years, I believe it was introduced on iOS 9 (perhaps earlier). You can already search “mountain” or “Eiffel tower” or “dog running” and it will work. So if they’re now doing AI processing externally, they’re certainly doing it for different reasons. My bet is they’re collecting personal data regardless of what the ToS claims, and that they’re for sure training AI models on users’ pictures.

      • Anticorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        4 months ago

        That was my suspicion too, but I didn’t want to come right out and say it without more information